Larry Fink Predicts AI Could Help Control Inflation
According to Larry Fink, the CEO of BlackRock Inc., artificial intelligence has enormous capabilities to enhance productivity and could potentially be the technology that curbs inflation.
Collapsing productivity has been a key issue in global economies and a major “reason why we have such sticky inflation,” he said at BlackRock Investor Day on Wednesday. Fink said AI “could be a technology that can lower inflation.”
The CEO of the world’s largest asset manager said AI could have “very big results in long-term investing” and could also transform margins across sectors. With AI, Fink said, BlackRock has “the same healthy paranoia, the same healthy enthusiasm” it brings to its other companies.
Fink and other executives laid out a vision for BlackRock’s growth as a one-stop shop for investors, providing clients with advice on technology, data, analytics, funds and financial markets.
The firm aims to double its private markets revenue over the next five years to about $2 billion from $1 billion in 2022. Revenue from private markets — including infrastructure, private equity, real estate and private credit — had already more than doubled since 2018.
The 70-year-old Fink also told investors that he does not expect to retire anytime soon.
“I don’t plan to leave BlackRock anytime soon,” he said, “but the BlackRock board and I have no higher priority than developing the next generation of leaders.”
BlackRock has grown in size and influence over the past decade, and investors have poured money into the company’s index, exchange-traded and other funds. The company managed $9.1 trillion in client assets at the end of March, and netted $110 billion in the first quarter as investors poured money into the firm’s cash management and bond funds.
